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CONSIDERATION OF THE PAEDOCOMMUNION POSITION Part3
PROBLEM NUMBER EIGHT: At the institution of the Lord's Supper Christ identifies His sacrament with the Passover but does not equate the two. As a matter of fact, He clearly distinguishes the Lord's Supper from the Passover.
The distinction is seen in what Christ does: His initiating the Lord's Supper after the Passover rites were completed, His inviting only the twelve apostles rather than His own family (as the head of His family it was His responsibility to lead them in the Passover), His not having repeated the elements of the Passover as elements of the Lord's Supper (eating lamb and bitter herbs), His giving the cup to all of them as a primary element of the sacrament (the cup was not part of the Egyptian or levitical Passover rites).
This distinction between the Passover and the Lord's Supper is also seen in what Jesus says in instituting the latter. The following have no parallel in the Passover and clearly separate the Lord's Supper from it: His command to appropriate the bread (and not the lamb), the identification of the bread with His body, the explanation that His body was given "for you", the charge to do this (eat the bread, His body) in remembering Him, the command to drink the wine as symbolical of drinking blood, the description of the cup as the blood of the covenant or the new covenant in His blood, the explanation that His blood was shed or poured out for many unto the remission of sins, the remembering clause, and the eschatological clause.[3]
PROBLEM NUMBER NINE: At the institution of the Lord's' Supper, our Lord does not quote or use the litany of the Passover but repeats the words of the covenantal dedicatory meal on Mt. Sinai (Exod. 32). With the words explaining His as the blood of the new covenant Christ identifies His supper with the meal eaten on Mt. Sinai. This and the words immediately attached to taking the bread and wine, constitute a declaration of the central significance of the elements and theology of the Lord's Supper, and it is clearly distinguished from the central significance of the elements and theology of the Passover. Hence, the Lord's Supper is a different meal, a new meal.
PROBLEM NUMBER TEN: Hebrews identifies the Lord's Supper with the great atonement. This identification is evidenced elsewhere in the New Testament, but is most extensively set forth here (Heb. 10:19-22). Hebrews pointedly and in detail handles the relationship between the person and work of Christ and the Old Testament levitical system. It teaches that all of the Old Testament sacrifices find their meaning and fulfillment in the great atonement and that the great atonement finds its meaning and fulfillment in the work of Christ. The entire levitical system was patterned after the true sanctuary and its heavenly rites. Only insofar as those heavenly rites are efficacious and the earthly rites are spiritually tied to them, are the earthly rites efficacious. Christ entered into the heavenly holy of holies and once for all covered the mercy seat with His own blood thereby forever atoning for the sin of His people. To commemorate His great priestly work He instituted the Lord's Supper. Therefore, it is a meal directly attached to the holy of holies in heaven. Whereas all Old Testament meals were eaten outside the holy of holies, our Lord instituted a meal eaten inside that sanctuary. So, "we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary for sin, are burned outside the gate." The bodies of the atonement goats (the only sacrifice made in the holy of holies and the only altar from which the Old Testament priests could not eat) which were killed each year were not consumed by the priests (let alone by other worshippers) but were destroyed, whereas the body (and blood) of Christ (which was offered on the altar in the heavenly holy of holies) is consumed by the worshippers. Those Old Testament worshippers are barred from the Lord's Supper/Meal. They can and could do no more than the levitical law allowed. Under the new covenant, Christ admits even the common believer to the holy of holies and there hosts a meal for them (Matt. 26:29; Heb. 13:10).
PROBLEM NUMBER ELEVEN: There is only one passage in the New Testament that deals with admission to the Lord's Supper, I Cor. 11:26-30. This passage sets forth four characteristics of the Lord's Supper none of which are specifically attached in the Old Testament to the Passover (either Egyptian or levitical) and all of which are attached to the observance of the trespass or guilt offering. These are: (26) declaring or showing the Lord's death, i.e., declaring not simply the fact of that death but the efficacy of that death as in the Old Testament guilt or trespass offering when the priests' eating the offering within the sanctuary confines declared the efficacy of the sacrifice (so, in Isa. 53:10 Christ is called the guilt offering; there is no declaring the efficacy of an offering within the sanctuary in the Passover observance); (27) being liable to guilt or divine judgment as one partakes the elements (since the trespass offering was eaten within the sanctuary, this eating was sanctioned by divine judgment, cf., Num. 17:12-18:7); (28) the necessity of self-examination before eating the meal (this was obviously required when the priests ate the trespass offering because they ate within the sanctuary but it was not a prerequisite for eating the Passover since small children could eat without preparatory self-examination); and (29) the liability to divine sanctions (this was true of eating the trespass meal as demonstrated in Num. 17:12-18:18). The identification of the elements of observance of the Lord's Supper here in I Corinthians 11 speaks much about the terms of admission to the Lord's Supper. The declaration is no childish or childlike declaration but is the mature declaration of a trained and mature adult (26). The liability to death is not to be brought upon infants and children. In the Old Testament God makes it clear that only mature and spiritually educated adults were to face this liability (27). So, in the New Testament, it is implied that only mature adults self-consciously pursing godliness are to face this liability. The self-examination Paul mandates is, like the self-examination in the Old Testament and as the apostle expressly teaches, mandated upon all who partake of the Lord's Supper (28). The liability to sickness and death manifested in Corinth is now a spiritual liability (29). This, too, tells us that participation in the Lord's Supper requires not only "negative sanctification" (the absence of sinful acts; a state one may think is found in infants) but "positive sanctification", the presence of responsibly doing the revealed will of God (as only adults may do).
It is not unimportant to this writer that in the Old Testament children could not approach the altar in their own persons but
through circumcision were acknowledged as being under the covenant and approached the altar in and through their federal heads (their fathers). Jesus, the perfect son of God, like all the children of the Old Testament era did not approach the altar until he attained manhood (Lk. 2:22-24).[4]
Hence, because of the Old Testament requirement that no one be admitted to the altar apart from a prior confession of faith (cf., Heb. 13:10), with the supporting evidence in the experience of Jesus, and the evidence that could be supplied from the book of Acts and I Corinthians that everyone who made a credible profession of faith (all qualified new covenant priests) was admitted we conclude that admission to the Lord's Supper requires a prior and adult profession of faith.
ARGUMENT NUMBER TWELVE: The paedocommunion argument admits infants and small children to the Lord's Supper. Some protagonists add that there are two requirements for admission to the Lord's Supper, baptism and sufficient physical maturity to ingest food. The problem this involves is that it mandates a redefinition of the nature of the sacrament in the direction of, or in conformity to the Roman Catholic concept of ex opera operato. This is, it seems to me unavoidable. Little children are to be admitted to the Lord's Table before they are able to understand language and, hence, before they can feed on the Word of God conceived as propositional communication (cf., Jn. 6:63). The only possible conclusion to the paedocommunion protagonist is that such children must feed on the Word of God in some sense other than feeding on the Word of God as propositional communication. So, when such a child takes the Lord's Supper and it is said to be sacramental for him then communication of grace to him must be mechanical since it cannot be spiritual (as Christ and reformed theology have defined it).
Some attempt to get around this logical necessity by adding another admission requirement (in addition to baptism/circumcision, and physical maturity), viz., spiritual maturity. But when they do this they have no basis in the Old Testament for such a requirement. The Passover in Egypt and the Levitical Passover both admitted children as soon as the child could eat. Still other paedocommunion protagonists appear to confuse spiritual maturity (the ability to feed on the Word of God, i.e., the words of Christ, to discern the Lord's body, etc.) with external faithfulness to covenantal requirements. The latter is the accompaniment with eating the Passover but hardly a prerequisite. On the other hand, feeding on the words of God is a necessary prerequisite for eating the Lord's Supper. Jesus said it clearly when He explained the difference between a merely physical eating of the bread/manna in the wilderness (and physically eating His body and drinking His blood or physically consuming the elements of the Lord's Supper) and a true spiritual or sacramental consuming of the elements in the Lord's Supper, when He said, "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (Jn. 6:63). Thus Jesus explains to us that the mere eating of the bread and drinking of the water in the wilderness, and the mere eating of the bread and drinking the wine in the Lord's Supper profit nothing! It is not sacramental. If a mouse, a child, or an unbeliever takes the Lord's Supper it profits him nothing. Moreover, Paul adds that if a person takes the Lord's Supper in contempt of the Lord (which implies a degree of conscious understanding and rejection) then he eats and drinks judgment to himself (I Cor. 11:29).
It should be clear (on the basis of Jesus' words) that it is unbiblical for the paedocommunion protagonist to argue that if the generic Passover admitted children and the generic Passover was sacramental then, even though we cannot resolve the theological problem as to its sacramental nature, we must admit children to the Lord's Supper just as they were admitted to the Old Testament sacrament, the Passover. In conformity to what our Lord says ("The flesh profits nothing"), in my book on Paedocommunion, I seek to demonstrate that the various Old Testament meals were sacramental but they each signified and, therefore, sealed different aspects of God's redemption as it was worked out and set forth in the Old Testament. The wilderness meals were "sacramental' but they did not simply signify and seal eternal life and neither did the Passover. When Jesus says the flesh, i.e., the eating and drinking in the wilderness and all other mere eating profits nothing spiritually, it must be consistent with Paul in I Corinthians 10 when Paul teaches that the wilderness eating and drinking was sacramental. The Passover signified and sealed the temporal redemption from Egypt and the divine identification of His nation/people Israel. It has a typological significance to be sure, but it was theologically and typologically necessary for there to be more than the Passover to set before Israel the fullness of divine redemption. It is not insignificant to me or, I believe, to God (as it appears to be to paedocommunion) that the Passover was the "lowest" (least significant as to what it signified and sealed) sacrifice and nearly the least significant of the Old Testament meals.[5] Following up on His words ("The flesh profits nothing") and in clear contrast to the Passover, Jesus initiated the Lord's Supper as the meal which signifies and seals feeding on the Spirit, on His words.
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CONSIDERATION OF THE PAEDOCOMMUNION POSITION
© Leonard J. Coppes
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